She was the strongest person he’d ever known. The cancer ate up her insides, yet still she refused the drugs that would give her peace. Ease her pain. “I won’t be me with those drugs,” she explained. “And I want to be with you until the very end.”

She was lying in his arms, at home, when she took her last breath.

Now he leaned forward, kissed her name on the stone, and whispered, “I miss your morning breath.”

###

Over his twenty-year career at the FBI, Nate had become an expert in forensic analysis. He could take all manner of disparate crime scene evidence and piece it together to understand what had really happened. In fact, in the last two decades, Nate had practically reinvented some of the techniques used in crime scene analysis; unlike many of his colleagues, he preferred to do his own fieldwork. And six months ago, he’d been assigned to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.

He didn’t feel convinced that being a forensic science instructor was what he was best suited for, but he remembered well what the head of the FBI Academy said to him on the day he reported for his teaching assignment. “With your accomplishments, you’ve set the mark for what it means to be an FBI forensic analyst. The FBI would love to have another couple hundred of you, but since there’s only one, we need you to work with the other agents and help them learn how to do what you do.”

It was still pre-dawn as Nate entered the secure wing that qualified as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. It didn’t look as impressive as it sounded. Cheap warehouse metal furniture, white painted cinder-block walls, commercial-grade brown carpeting. Nate could still detect the stink of decades-old tobacco that had seeped into the pores of this old building. But the computers were high-tech.

Nate sat down in front of the monitor labeled “Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System”—or what everyone in the intelligence community knew as “JayWicks,” the dedicated network by which Top Secret content was securely transmitted. Next to the label was a sticker of a cartoon blue jay with a feathery finger placed in front of its beak, motioning for silence.

Nate logged into the secure system, pulled up his inbox, and opened the message that awaited him.

TO: Nathaniel Carrington, Special Agent - FBI

SUBJECT: Forensic analysis on military incident.

There are reasonable grounds to believe that there have been attempted cover-ups associated with activities at Homey Airport, a military base located near Groom Lake, Nevada.

Satellite data, attached, confirms that as of eight days ago, there was a 150-acre brushfire within the borders of Homey Airport. On-site security personnel have not logged the brushfire in any incident reports.